from OCLC Research

MOOCs and Libraries: Next Steps?

[On March 18th and 19th, 2013 OCLC and the University of Pennsylvania Libraries held a forum on MOOCs and Libraries. This is the sixth in a short series of postings on that event. You can read other postings on this topic in the archives, and check out all of the deliverable on the event page.]

For our MOOCs and Libraries event, it was important to come away with concrete of opportunities for librarians — hopefully now that we have a cohort of attendees (in person attendees, remote attendees, and those of you who have watched the videos, reviewed the Twitter stream, and read these summaries!) there are some positive and meaningful ways that librarians can engage with MOOCs. To help the end of the day on both Monday and Tuesday, my colleague Chrystie Hill led us in small group discussions. (We also tried to include the remote audience in the discussions, with mixed results).

The questions for discussion were:

What have you learned here today?

What are the implications for your library?

What should you or your organization do next?

What are the key strategic moves that libraries should make in regards to MOOCs?

On the last point, the small groups were asked to come up with their top three recommendations. Then as a whole, we heard all the “top three” from each table. Not surprisingly, there was quite a bit of overlap, and my colleague Dale Musselman nicely transcribed and organized the outcomes into 9 rough categories.

Get the library involved

Start talking/collaborating/sharing between libraries

Take MOOCs

Get in front of licensing and access

Create MOOCs

Support MOOC faculty

Support MOOC students

Create in-person support opportunities

Re-assess library assumptions and practices

Of these, from my perspective, the things that every librarian can do is to take a MOOC, and contribute to the conversation by listening to others who have been invovled in MOOCs, and sharing information and experiences.

My thanks to Chrystie for structuring and facilitating this sessions, and to Dale for helping to organize the outcomes document.